Spells and Visions; A Harry Potter story

YEAR 6: Chapter 1: Brand New

Again, the story here begins where it started off last year, so if you're confused, take a look back. Enjoy!

We stood in the garden directly under our rooms. I looked around, went to the other side of the house and peeked through the window. No one.
"She isn't home," I said to Neville and Tonks. "Let's go."
"We don't have the key," Neville said.
"No problem."
I Apparated to my room above, and Tonks gave a gasp. I realised I hadn't told her we could Apparate, and went down again.
"Please don't tell anyone," Neville said. "We can both do that."
"But- how?" Tonks said with eyes wide in shock.
"Well, S-" I started. "The Ministry won't know, okay? They can't detect us."
"That's awesome," Tonks breathed.
"Yeah, I know. Come on, Nev."
Sofia hooted in her cage.
"Don't worry, I'll be right back," I said to her.

We Apparated to our rooms. I grabbed another trunk, threw the clothes I hadn't taken with me in it, along with a few other things, but it wasn't much. I looked one more time around the room in the house I grew up in, but never could call home. Then I sighed and Apparated back with my trunk.
Neville came down a second after me, and he looked at me.
"Feels kind of strange, doesn't it? Leaving."
"Yeah," I sighed.

"Alright, where is the house of your friend?" Tonks asked.
"Not far, we can Apparate a bit, but from there we have to walk," I said, and so we did. Tonks had changed her appearance to that of a regular Muggle, but I did notice something different about her. When we weren't talking, her face seemed tired and a bit sad. I decided not to ask about it, she would tell herself if she wanted to. Then, with a pang, I realised that she was the niece of Sirius, who was a cousin to her mother. She was also family of me. But she didn't know Sirius that well, did she? Maybe she just thought she could've saved him, like I did. I still couldn't shake the feeling.

We arrived at Lydia's house, and suddenly nervously, I knocked. A woman opened the door, who I recognised to be Lydia's mother, mrs Jones. She smiled when she saw me.
"Hi," I said. "Um, we found ourselves in a bit of a situation, and- er- we can't return to our former house. It's really hard to explain, and I'm- we're- still not really over what happened, but Lydia told me that if our mum gave us a hard time, we would be welcome to stay at your house. We have nowhere else to go, you see."
I saw her face in thought, and quickly added: "It's only for the holidays, and maybe we'll go and stay at another friend's house for a while, and we still need to do some things today."

"Just the two of you?" she asked, looking at Tonks, who stood a bit behind me and Neville.
"Yeah, she is only here to escort us," I said quickly.
"Well, we do have a spare bedroom, so I guess it's not much of a problem, but when you're here, you'll have to help Lydia in the shop."
We nodded.
"Lydia! she called. "Some of your old friends are here!" I wouldn't be surprised if they found it weird that after years we decided to show up at their house.

Lydia showed up at the door, and smiled at us.
"Hi, Jynx, hi, Neville. Good to see you. How are you?"
"Could be better," Neville shrugged.
"Well, come on in, dinner is almost ready," mrs Jones said.
"I think we'll skip dinner this time, we have to do a few things, like I said," I told her kindly. "But thank you."
"That's alright, but put your trunks in the house, please. Lydia, will you show them to their room?"
Lydia took two of the trunks, but gasped when she saw Sofia.
"Wow, you have an owl? She is so cute!"
"Yeah, I know," I smiled. "I have food for her," I said to the concerned-looking mrs Jones.

"So, what exactly happened?" Lydia asked, as we set our trunks in the spare room.
"It's a long- a very long story," I said.
"We can't explain all of it, it's very complicated," Neville added.
"Oh," Lydia said. "But I mean, what happened with your mum?"
"Well, to be honest, I think she kind of disowned us," Neville said.
"And our dad died, so we basically have no parents left."
"Died?" she gasped.
"Yeah, two years ago, we finally found him again, and now he got killed, and there was nothing we could do," I said, blinking back the tears.
"Oh, guys, I'm so sorry! I had no idea!"
"It's not your fault, really," Neville said.
"We'll try to explain things as soon as we come back, I promise," I assured her. "But we need to settle a few things from our father, you know, so we really need to go now."